TBEX Sponsor Post: When Great Storytellers Came to Visit

TBEX, you sure are a prolific lot. You generated more than 31,000 tweets and 6,000 photos on Instagram in a 96-hour period. And counting. Trying to work through it is like taking a sip from Niagara Falls.

All that social activity is about sharing experiences and inviting people who may be in the same room or continents away to join you for the ride. It’s the very essence of travel journalism and collectively the TBEX community is leading the way, harnessing new technology to bring travel to life in ways we never before imagined.

It is clear how committed the community is to individual and collective improvement. Every session was packed to the doors (and sometimes beyond) and every one was followed by long lines to ask more questions of the speakers. I’ve had a front-row seat over the past year as the Blogworld team assembled the program and built the conference. I saw from day one how they viewed the content, structure and experience from the delegates’ eyes and created a program to inspire and educate.

In their first full cycle as TBEX planners, the Blogworld team raised the bar significantly and there is no turning back. TBEX is a highly professional, industry-unifying event.

I hope that we in Toronto also raised the bar for host destinations. We spent a year working on this, along with our partners Ontario and Canada, and fed off the energy of thousands of local tourism businesses and local travel bloggers who never stop sharing their Toronto with the world.

In the end, we are overwhelmed by the words and photos shared about Toronto. Of course we hope they won’t be the last words you share about Toronto. Hopefully your experience here has inspired you to return, even more curious, and to explore deeper and wider across Toronto and beyond into Ontario and Canada.

To Blogworld, we say thanks for this opportunity. To our friends in Dublin, we pass the torch with pride. And to the entire TBEX community, we say thanks for visiting, thanks for your infectious energy, and thanks for sharing your Toronto experiences with millions of people. Most of you have returned home or embarked on your next adventure. Let’s all stay connected and make a date to get together again soon.

Safe and inspiring travels all,

Andrew Weir is Vice President, Communications of Tourism Toronto. Follow him at @ABWeir.